


The Face of Your Salvation

by aldiara



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Companion Piece, Dark, F/M, Foreshadowing, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-27
Updated: 2014-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 10:06:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,038
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1854094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aldiara/pseuds/aldiara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Spike's in hot pursuit of the Slayer, and Drusilla mourns for the hundred years they shared.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Face of Your Salvation

**Author's Note:**

> Character study piece to go with "Crush", S05E14. I love me some Spuffy, but that episode always breaks my heart for Dru. (I realised belatedly that maybe I could've/should've given a nod to Harmony's existence, but yes, I forgot about _the actual girlfriend_. Sorry, Harm!
> 
> Thanks to Alsha for beta-ing <3

The air in here crackles with portent, like on the night I saved you from your life. A cave. I used to like a cave. Caves are good for games, yes, and for hiding too. Dank, dark places, always dripping somewhere, so none can tell if you’ve strung up something and let it bleed out slow, drip drippity drip. 

This isn’t like that, though. This cave is bright with torchlight and the signs of habitation, warm from the flame and from the heat that rises off you as you pace, an unnatural heat, a fever. The only cold thing is the pole you’ve tied me to, tight but not fun-tight. Suppose you couldn’t find an altar. I’d not have minded being your plaything if there was an altar. Instead, you pace and rant and explain things to the Slayer, spilling ludicrous confessions that make me giggle even as they gut me. Rage and despair and confusion waft off you – you smell so lost, and that too is familiar.

You were like this the night we met. My memory’s a tricky thing these days, but I recall that night, near to a hundred years ago, so clearly. I smelled you before I met you, on the night air, like the promise of a storm. All tangled up, the scent of you, smeared ink and blackcurrant wine gone sour, rank tendrils of despair and loathing wafting through like kelp. And salt: sweat, tears, snot, blood. Such salty creatures, humans are. I used to wonder why there’s not a salty crust left over when we drain them dry, a lovely sea-salt harvest to bake breads with and make soup. Darla scoffed when I mentioned it, and Angelus laughed and petted my hair and called me a dear, strange creature, but neither gave me answer. Where does all the salt go when the blood is gone?

So dark you smelled. So alone. But underneath it all, a whiff of sweetness and longing, like Christmas pudding when you take the linen off. A restlessness in there, hot and heaving, asking me to wallow in the muck of your desires. That is, not me. Anyone. But I was the only one who sensed it. The only one who whipped the sea foam of your dreams and made them solid. I offered freedom like a dangly treat and you followed, never gazing back.

Muddled. Everything is in there and it’s all tangled up in words and pictures coming out all topsy-turvy, never coming clear. It didn’t used to be so muddled. I used to make sense when I told you my little stories, curled up against you in the dark while you listened and stroked my hair and laughed, slipping a hand inside my dress.

A hundred years we had, and now look what you’ve done, you naughty boy. Thrown me over for a slippy blade of a girl. A Slayer, when once you’d have cupped her blood in your hands for me to lap from, thick and warm. A New World girl, all primped and perky and perfumed. 

A _blonde_.

The worst thing is it’s not that trinket in your brain, the ticky-tocky burny-twitchy wire trap. It’s your heart that’s infected, your sweet, dark heart, so heavy and so still. I used to place my ear against your chest and feel it in there; closing my eyes to see the colours of it, all dusty blues and slicky-pinkish greys. I longed and longed to put my hands inside you and cup my fingers round it. To feel the smooth cold shape of it, wriggle my nails inside like hooks and get as close as anything had ever been. (What’s a thing that burns, burns, burns, but cold and treasure-blue?)

She’s closer now than even that. The Slayer. She’s flowing through your veins like poison, no matter that you never drank her blood. Stumbled in there without meaning to, the way you only find your way through a maze when you’re not trying. Bad girl, to set her tinder to your poor cool heart and make it smoke! To make you cower, cringe and debase yourself, using me as a bargaining chip to try and prove your love to her. Touching my cheek and calling me the face of your salvation to make her see why this offer is meaningful. I hear the fondness in your voice but it’s only an echo now. I’d weep, but tears are so hot and I’m all out of salt. A hundred years you followed me like fen fire, and now look what you’ve made of me. A burned-up dolly offered as a sacrifice, for her to roll her eyes at and dismiss.

A hundred years, a thousand times we saved each other. From the stake, the sword, the fire, from the mad light of the sun. From our own kind, the ones who’d growl and sneer and call us tainted for hanging on to weakling human feeling-tatters that we ought to have shed with our heartbeats and our souls. 

You never cared. You snarled your fangs at those who disapproved; laughed and killed them if they bothered you, or brought them home for me as playthings. (Oh how I adored those little tea parties. Our kind lasts so much longer!) You took whatever you wanted, human or not. Such heady possets you would make, swirling torture with poetry, blood rage with puppet plays, sprinkling our delicious ruttings with tender little touches.

You _liked_ love. You wouldn’t give it up.

Angelus used to call you flawed, too warm by far for our kind, but I think he had it wrong. I think you were the purest of us all because you broke every rule you came up against, and that’s what’s truly at the core of us. Chaos. That’s what we’re for. It’s what we ought to be.

O but my sweet, I cannot save you now. Not when you burn like this, all true-flame hot and yellow. I cannot even touch. Nor tell you what I see and fear – a real fire, coming for you, coming hard and fast and roaring. You wouldn’t hear me, love, over the beating-beating, loud and discordant, of your dear, poisoned, no-longer-silent heart.


End file.
